Something similar to this has happened to me. I was lucky enough to escape. This happened earlier this year:
I was looking out towards the beach and a random guy comes stands behind me, I turn around and all of sudden realised that he's there (even at this point he could have just grabbed me from behind). I was like may I help you, he just smiled. I was talking on the phone to a family member telling them that there is a weird guy behind me (obviously not in English). I had a flight to catch the next day to Pakistan. I started walking away from the guy, he started walking after me and a little later started cussing. I was like dude, whats your problem? He just kept on insulting me, and was like "what you going to do..who you talkin too" (can't post the cuss words and other phrases he used). At this point, it was that "fight or flight" mode activated in my brain (or so I think). My mind was going all over the place, thinking of what should I do, I was like I have a flight to catch tomorrow, is it the wisest thing to stand here and try to fight this junky who already has nothing to lose in life.
He took off his vest and started to fling-it at me, I blocked one of the hits and grabbed his vest and threw it on the sand. All of a sudden I saw these cut marks he already had on his body. In my mind I was like, he must have a weapon on him, I'm sure he must have had a knife on him or even a gun, who knows. I remember seeing police officers just outside the beach area before walking to where I was. I knew he couldn't outrun me, so I made him chase me. He came after me, the cops were about 500 ft away. Soon as he realized I was heading towards the cops he changed directions and acted like nothing had happened. I told the cops, pointed him out, and after this have no idea what happened to him.
Coming to the point if you know martial arts and all this good stuff (I have taken martial arts, and the block I used when he was flinging his vest at me was with the help of my martial arts training), it can come in handy if you train your body and brain properly, they must be in sync. Most of the time it's not worth the materialistic things in life, as I mentioned above they can always be replaced. Self-defense is a great tool to learn but at the same time, one has to be realistic. In my case, my priority was I was going to Pakistan with my family, something like this could have caused a drastic change in events if I had stood there and decided to take him on.
Personally, I learned a lot from this experience, never had anything like this happen to me before, I did freeze up for a second. The human mind is an amazing tool, and at that time it felt that I had slowed my thought process down to figure out exactly what I wanted to do and what would be the best approach to the situation.
I thank Allah for this everytime I think about it, I think it could have been worse, but Allah has his ways of protecting us.
